


Left Behind

by lick



Series: No Easy Distance [4]
Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Alternate POV, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Gore, Dr. Mensah Has Feelings, Dr. Mensah's POV, Emetophobia, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lick/pseuds/lick
Summary: They were free falling through the air. They hit a hard wall, and SecUnit let go of Ayda. She tumbled down and hit the ground hard. SecUnit landed a split second later with a heavy thump.“SecUnit?” Ayda gritted out.It didn't respond. Ayda's blood ran cold.SecUnit wasn’t going to get them out of this. It had to be her. Okay, then Ayda was going to get them both out of this. She was getting everyone off this fucking planet.--Or, Dr. Mensah's POV at the end of chapter seven ofAll Systems Red.
Relationships: Dr. Mensah & Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Series: No Easy Distance [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146596
Comments: 16
Kudos: 58





	Left Behind

So, everything that had happened over the last hour had gone horribly wrong. There were more things that had gone horribly wrong further back in time too, but Ayda was too pre-occupied by the fact that she was about to die to get upset about those things right now.

The surveyors from GrayCris started to panic when the beacon had powered up, but the primary engine hadn’t quite ignited yet. SecUnit had tried to run to her, but the other units started firing at it. She didn’t think SecUnit would have time to reach her.

In the confusion, Ayda slipped away from the group, ducking behind the hopper. It wouldn’t stop her from being incinerated, but Ayda wasn’t about to stare at the beacon and wait for her doom, either.

 _At least the others will make it_ , she thought grimly. The beacon would launch, and the company would rescue them.

That thought was all but forgotten when a solid, armored body crashed into her from the side.

The impact knocked the air out of her chest, and Ayda made a pained grunt. SecUnit grabbed her with one arm encircling her waist and the other holding the back of her head, pressing her helmet into its chest. She curled her body up, latching onto SecUnit around the ribs and trying to make herself easier to hold.

She closed her eyes and felt the heat of the fire as it engulfed the plain through the thin fabric of her enviro-suit. 

They plunged over the side of the plateau. Ayda’s head slammed into the back of her helmet, and the sharp pain in her neck strangled her cry. They crashed through a grove of rocks first, and then into a wooded thicket. The trees made a cacophony of noise as they barreled through snapping the branches. Something caught onto Ayda’s wrist. There was white hot pain, a straining feeling, and then a snap as her wrist was freed and stabs of pain bubbled up her arm.

Then they were free falling through the air. They hit a hard wall, and SecUnit let go of Ayda. She tumbled down and hit the ground, her body landing on top of her already injured wrist, exacerbating the pain. SecUnit hit the ground a split second later with a heavy thump, mercifully not on top of her.

Ayda gasped and let out a sound that was probably something close to a whine. Her head was pounding. She blinked rapidly, trying to open her eyes to figure out where she was. A wave of nausea hit her, and she closed her eyes again trying to hold it back. She didn’t feel capable of movement enough to get her helmet off, and she really didn’t want to vomit in it. She was also beginning to realize that if this was _really bad_ , she might not know where or when her next meal was coming.

She breathed quickly and shallowly through her teeth. Her wrist was hot and pulsing, and something was seriously wrong with at least two of her fingers, too. She managed to open her eyes and saw the unnatural angle it was bent at. _Oh, that_ _’_ _s not good_ , she thought, stomach lurching again.

Her enviro-glove was blackened from the fire, and as she struggled to focus her vision, she realized her entire enviro-suit was at least a little singed. Other areas were more severely burnt, and Ayda thought the fabric would probably disintegrate when she tried to move it more. The skin beneath those areas hurt, but a tiny part of her brain was cognizant enough to know that a burn that didn’t hurt was a far bigger problem than one that did.

She took in more of her surroundings. They had fallen in a shallow ravine. It was less than five meters across at its widest point, but the walls were at least four times her height and very steep. There weren’t any plants or water sources at the bottom, though closer to the top wispy vegetation clung to the rocks.

SecUnit was lying about a meter and a half away from her. It was in a twisted sprawl, half on its back and half on its side. Something was very wrong with its arm. It was like it had been pulled out of its socket, with nearly enough force to detach it entirely. There was a puddle of fluid soaking the sand beneath it. Parts of its armor had melted from the extreme heat. The DeltFall logo that had been on its shoulder was now unrecognizable.

“SecUnit?” Ayda gritted out.

It didn’t move. It was still as the dead.

A heavy weight settled like a rock in Ayda’s gut. SecUnit wasn’t going to get them out of this. It had to be her. Okay, then Ayda was going to get them both out of this. She was getting everyone off this fucking planet, out of the fucking Corporation Rim, and she was going to make every single executive at GrayCris regret even thinking about fucking with the Preservation Alliance.

Well, first she had to figure out how to sit up without losing her stomach contents. She stretched her legs out first, trying to straighten them. The muscles protested but compared to her arm it was nothing. She hoped that she had only bruised them. She flexed her ankles and her feet. Mercifully, they felt fine.

She flexed her uninjured shoulder next, and shifted her torso to lay flat on her back. She panted a little, feeling the nausea return. She closed her eyes, even more afraid of vomiting now, and fought it desperately, swallowing nothing to try to hold back the urge. After a couple long minutes, the nausea faded. She felt a bead of sweat roll down her face.

Ayda used her uninjured arm to support herself and managed to sit upright. Her head spun, and black and white spots impeded on her vision. She nearly laid back down. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her headache was concentrated in a few different spots: near the nape of her neck, above her right eye, on the left side behind her ear.

 _Oh, I_ _’_ _m concussed,_ she realized wearily, and opened her eyes again.

She cradled her injured arm against her chest with the good one and used her feet to scoot closer to SecUnit. It hadn’t moved at all. Leaning in closer, Ayda could see from the visible edges that its entire back, from the top of its helmet to its boots was badly burned. The heat had melted the smooth composite outermost layer of the armor, and it was hard to tell what damage lay beneath it.

SecUnit had cracked its faceplate at some point in the fall. The break was on the lower left side of the faceplate, and the cracks stretched away from the focal point like a spider web.

Ayda lifted its head, and let it rest on her knee. She then clumsily felt around inside the neck joint of the armor until she found the manual release for the helmet. She pulled it, and there was an audible click as the locks disengaged. It was hard to do it one handed, but she stuck her fingers under the lip of the helmet and managed to wrench it off. The helmet came off all at once with a jolt and slipped out of her fingers, hitting the rocky ground and sliding away as it disturbed the pebbles. SecUnit’s head settled back down on her knee.

Ayda was relieved to see that SecUnit’s face wasn’t burned. The skin around its left eye was already darkening into a bad bruise, swelling a little. Its eyes were closed as though it were sleeping. There was dried blood on its lip, and chin. It had bitten its lip so hard at some point that it had broken the skin.

She didn’t even know if it was still alive. She didn’t know how to check. If it had broken its neck in the fall, would it have died?

Her next exhalation came out as a hiss. She screwed her eyes shut and clenched her uninjured hand into a tight fist. She was back to just being fucking angry at it all, at the Corporation Rim, at the universe, at the people who made SecUnits and did these things to them.

Her eyes stung as she tried to hold back her tears. She couldn’t help but think about how fucking wrong it all was. She had chosen to come to this planet, agreed to lead a survey in Corporation Rim territory, despite the risks. SecUnit hadn’t had a choice, a chance to weigh the costs and the benefits like the rest of them had. It’d been packed into a shipping container and dumped on this planet with them.

She cupped its cheek in her hand. She didn’t know what to do. Maybe beg it to wake up? At the caress of her fingers, it twitched a little bit, reacting to her. Its eyelids started to open, but only a crack. Only the whites of its eyes were visible. She drew her hand away and inhaled with trepidation.

SecUnit said, in a voice that wasn’t its own, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it. Your contract allows you to do so at a financial penalty in emergency scenarios.”

Ayda scrambled away in shock. Without her knee for support, its head hit the ground hard, and she winced. She leaned her head against the rock wall of the ravine, her head swimming. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks. She told herself, _That wasn_ _’_ _t SecUnit._ It was another one of the preprogrammed phrases. She hadn’t heard it use one of them since before she knew it had hacked its governor module. She wanted desperately to hear its real voice, but at the same time she hoped that it wasn’t aware enough to feel the pain from all the damage it had suffered.

She needed to get it together. SecUnit needed her to get it together. So did Pin-Lee, and Gurathin. Ratthi, left behind at their habitat. The others, back at the campsite. She didn’t have time for a self-pitying breakdown. So, she turned her suit comm back on, and sent a single ping to Gurathin and Pin-Lee’s comms.

An instant later, both their voices were overlapping in her ears.

“ _Ayda, is that you?_ ” Pin-Lee said, while Gurathin said, “ _You_ _’_ _ve been out of contact for an hour! What the hell happened?_ ”

Ayda winced. She whispered into the comm, “Careful, if they pick you up on their scanner—”

Gurathin interrupted her. “ _Just tell us where you fucking are. Your signal isn_ _’_ _t coming from the hopper_.”

Ayda said, “The hopper is still at the meeting spot. The plan—it went wrong. They kidnapped us and took us to the beacon. We survived the explosion, but we’re injured. We can’t move.”

Gurathin began to ask, “ _How long do you think it_ _’_ _ll take—_ ”

He was interrupted by Pin-Lee. “ _Hang tight Ayda. We_ _’_ _ll contact you when we get to the hopper._ ”

The comm cut off. The silence hung heavy in the air. Ayda said, “Don’t worry, SecUnit. They’re coming to get us. Everything is going to be fine.”

SecUnit said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it. Your contract allows you to do so at a financial penalty in emergency scenarios.”

It was going to be a long wait.

Ayda’s head throbbed. She wanted to sleep, to recede into the blackness at the edges of her vision. But with no one to keep an eye on her, she knew it was a bad idea. She flexed her bad wrist and the searing pain certainly brought her back to clarity.

The best thing that could happen now was for SecUnit to wake up enough to get itself in the hopper. When it was injured before, at DeltFall, it had been difficult enough for Ayda, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi to lift it while all working together. Gurathin was stronger than Ratthi was, but was he strong enough to move SecUnit with only Pin-Lee to help?

SecUnit was obviously hovering at the edge of some kind of awareness. It was reacting to her voice, twitching occasionally, opening and closing its eyes. Ayda wondered if there was something she could do, say, that might help it break out of its semi-conscious state, get it awake enough to at least move under its own power into the hopper. It was reacting to her movements, her voice. What could she do to get its attention?

She huddled closer to SecUnit again. She hoped that if what she was going to try worked, SecUnit would forgive her for the violation of its privacy.

She whispered, “Murderbot?”

SecUnit’s breath hitched, its eyelids fluttered.

“Please, Murderbot, can you hear me?”

It let out a soft groan, and Ayda felt a surge of hope.

“Pin Lee and Gurathin are coming, Murderbot,” she told it. “If you can wake up, and help us move you into the hopper, we can get out of here faster.”

It exhaled heavily. Then it said, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it. Your contract allows you to do so at a financial penalty in emergency scenarios.”

Ayda clenched her fist and seethed. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, SecUnit.”

GrayCris wasn’t going to be the only corporation that would regret fucking with her when this was all over.

* * *

The hopper had been abandoned only about two kilometers from GrayCris’ base, so Ayda figured it should take an hour, tops, for Gurathin and Pin-Lee to get to it. The scenario that Ayda _really_ didn’t want to entertain yet was that the last GrayCris SecUnit or one of the other GrayCris employees would get to the hopper before they did.

However, Ayda was fairly sure based on the information they gave her (before they were all burnt to a crisp) that ones who had kidnapped her were the leaders of GrayCris operation. With the supervisors gone, the lower ranked employees would likely fight amongst themselves over who would take over the operation.

For once, Ayda thought that capitalist self-interest might actually be a good thing.

Throughout the wait, SecUnit occasionally stirred and reminded Ayda that she could abandon it. Every time it did, it made her angrier. She thought back to the shock on its face when she retrieved it from the DeltFall habitat. It had expected her to abandon it, she realized. How could it not? It was programmed to instruct her to abandon it at the most basic level of its operating system.

She didn’t care who she had to fight, in the Corporation Rim or back home in Preservation. SecUnit was coming home with her. Ayda Mensah wasn’t abandoning _anyone_.

Ayda’s comm crackled to life, and she instantly accepted the connection. “ _Can you hear me, Ayda?_ ” Pin-Lee’s voice asked. Pin-Lee and Gurathin had made it to the hopper.

“Yes! Can you pinpoint my location from there?” Ayda asked.

“ _Yes, we_ _’_ _re picking it up on the hopper_ _’_ _s system. It_ _’_ _s about a ten minute flight,_ ” Pin-Lee told her. “ _I_ _’_ _m powering up the engine now._ ”

“Any activity from their habitat?” Ayda asked.

“ _Not yet,_ ” Pin-Lee breathed.

Gurathin cut in, “ _Is it too crass to hope maybe they_ _’_ _re all busy killing each other?_ ”

“Not on the comm, Gurathin,” Ayda said, although she kind of secretly hoped it too.

They cut the comm contact, just in case. Ayda leaned over SecUnit, and told it, “They’re coming to get us. I told you.”

It reacted to her voice again, but mercifully the reflex instructing her to abandon it wasn’t triggered this time.

Ayda waited impatiently until she heard the distant whine from the hopper’s engine. She saw it glide over the ravine, and heard it drop to the ground nearby. They hadn’t seen her. Gurathin opened the hatch, and yelled, “Ayda!”

“Down here!” Ayda called. She saw Gurathin’s head pop up over the edge of the ravine. It wasn’t really that deep, but it felt insurmountable.

“We’re going to try to land inside!” Gurathin called down, and then Ayda heard the hopper power back up. Slowly, carefully, Pin-Lee landed the hopper in the center of the widest point of the ravine. Frankly, at the moment, Ayda couldn’t give a shit if they scratched the hopper or not (even though the company would rake them over the coals for it), but she was grateful that someone still cared.

They opened the hatch and dropped the ramp, rushing out.

“You look like shit. But I’m so glad you’re alright!” Pin-Lee said when her boots hit the ground, squirming and obviously resisting the urge to hug Ayda after she saw Ayda’s injury.

“Me too,” Ayda said.

Gurathin stared at SecUnit. “Is it…” he trailed off.

Pin-Lee stepped closer to SecUnit, kneeling over it to get a better look.

Ayda said, “Yes. It talked.” She felt agitated. “They’re going to get organized soon. We can’t rely on them to stay in their habitat much longer.”

Gurathin turned his gaze pointedly at Pin-Lee, who was examining SecUnit. He said sourly, “That’s why we need to hurry.”

Pin-Lee started to snap something back, but was cut off by SecUnit, who was once again saying, “This unit is at minimal functionality and it is recommended that you discard it. Your contract allows—”

Ayda couldn’t take it anymore. Hearing it say those words over and over again was getting to be too much for her. She snapped, “Shut up. You shut the fuck up. We’re not leaving you.”

Amazingly, it stopped SecUnit from finishing the canned phrase.

Pin-Lee and Gurathin both looked at her, and then SecUnit, and then her again questioningly. “Just… Don’t ask.” She gritted out.

“Okay.” Gurathin put a hand on the back of his neck, and then said, “It’ll be easier to drag it into the hopper if we take the armor off it. That’s a couple kilos we don’t have to move.”

“Good idea,” Pin-Lee agreed.

They kneeled on either side of SecUnit and began feeling inside the armor joints, looking for the hidden releases. Ayda felt impatient and paranoid. She was waiting to hear the buzz of another hopper’s engines.

They took off the armor on SecUnit’s good arm first but decided to leave the injured arm alone. The chest piece came off easily, but parts of the back paneling had melted into the skin, and they were scared of hurting SecUnit more by trying to remove it, so they reattached the chest plate. They were able to remove all of the armor on its legs, at least.

Ayda got to feel thoroughly useless watching Pin-Lee and Gurathin drag SecUnit into the hopper. They insisted that Ayda get in first, and sit on the far side of the hopper, just in case they couldn’t move SecUnit any further in than the door.

Gurathin gripped SecUnit by its good shoulder and around the ribs on the other side, while Pin-Lee took hold of its feet. It was slow going, and gave Ayda plenty of time to worry about GrayCris finding them while they were pinned down like this.

As he pulled SecUnit’s bulk into the hopper, Gurathin panted, “There’s no way we can lift it into one of the seats.” They dropped SecUnit off in the space on the floor between the cockpit and the first row of passenger seating.

Ayda told him, “I’ll get some of the extra padding.”

There were a couple small pillows in one of the storage compartments, which she got first. Then, Pin-Lee helped her take the removable padding off of the two back-most seats. They laid the pads out on the floor and Gurathin lowered SecUnit’s head and chest onto them. They pressed the pillows and the other pads to SecUnit’s sides, so at least if it rolled it wouldn’t slam right into the hard plastic frame of the cockpit seating.

Pin-Lee got in the pilot’s seat, and Gurathin sat next to her in the copilot’s spot. Ayda buckled up behind them. As the little hopper lifted off, she watched SecUnit’s jaw twitch again, and thought, _I told you I wouldn_ _’_ _t leave you behind._

* * *

For awhile, Ayda dozed. It wasn’t the most restful sleep. Gurathin woke her up every hour to check on her, so it felt like every time she was on the edge of deep sleep she was stirred. After a few hours of this, she was tired of it, so she and Gurathin switched places. He fell asleep nearly immediately.

Ayda buckled up in the copilot’s seat. It was sunset, and the planetary sky was rich with orange and pink toned clouds cutting into the view of the ring.

“How are you holding up?” Pin-Lee asked her.

Ayda glanced at Pin-Lee, but Pin-Lee’s gaze was fixed on the sky outside. Ayda sighed. “I’m doing my best. I can’t wait for Overse to look at my hand.” Ayda had her wrist elevated and iced, but she was eager for Overse to splint the broken wrist and fingers, which were steadily swelling and pulsing with pain.

Pin-Lee hummed. “What happened? In the ravine?”

“I broke my wrist and huddled uselessly against a wall until you saved me.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Pin-Lee sounded a little frustrated. “I didn’t want to hear it either, but why did you yell at SecUnit?”

Ayda’s stomach twisted, uncomfortably. She had had a feeling she was going to be asked about that eventually. “While I waiting for you and Gurathin, it just kept saying that, over and over. It got to me.”

“It hasn’t said it since,” Pin-Lee said softly.

“Not even while I was asleep?” Ayda asked. She’d heard Pin-Lee and Gurathin talking quietly but hadn’t really been cognizant enough to pay attention. SecUnit had been reacting to her voice before, she figured their voices would trigger it too.

“Nope,” Pin-Lee said. “It listened to you.”

Ayda sighed. “I’m beginning to think that SecUnit will need a lot more help than we can give it. The way it’s been conditioned…” She trailed off.

Pin-Lee said, “There’s not much you can do except give it the opportunity.”

There was something she was leaving unsaid.

“What is it?” Ayda said.

Pin-Lee said, “Now that all this has happened… I think it’s going to be a lot harder to get ownership over SecUnit.” She winced, and continued, “I know, that sounds bad. But when we talked about it before, I figured it’d probably be easy to buy it. There was no reason for the company to say _no_ as long as we coughed up a lot of money. Now that everything has happened with GrayCris and DeltFall, it’s recorded a lot of sensitive information. They’re not going to want to let us have that data. They’re going to think that’s why we’re trying to buy it.”

Ayda groaned. “Of course, they won’t buy the altruism angle. It’s the Corporation Rim, after all.”

Pin-Lee chuckled grimly. “They’re going to ratchet up the price a ton, too. If they’ll even agree it’s for sale.”

Ayda said, “You know what I said when we talked about this before, when I told you I wasn’t asking you for currency, Pin-Lee?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m asking you for it now.”

“Very funny.”

* * *

At dawn, they arrived at the habitat. When they’d gotten back within the big hopper’s comm range during the night, everyone agreed that they would stay at the habitat until the pick-up transport arrived. The group left behind at the campsite had packed everything back up and flown back to the habitat, arriving before Ayda’s group. Ayda and her group would’ve had to go the habitat even if they’d decided to go back to the campsite—they’d left Ratthi behind at the habitat once they discovered GrayCris’s summons.

It was SecUnit who had convinced Ratthi that it’d be best if he stayed behind.

Ayda reviewed the safety procedures during the flight. The company claimed that if an emergency beacon was triggered, they would arrive at the planet within two planetary days, and that they would check on every survey group through their respective HubSystems when they arrived. It was risky to pin themselves down at their habitat, but everyone agreed that it would be best if the whole group was there while they got HubSystem restarted so they could actually contact the company when they arrived. Overse, when she heard about Ayda’s injuries, had pushed hard to return to the habitat so that they would have access to the MedSystem.

Pin-Lee and Gurathin were going to have their hands full getting HubSystem restarted today. Well, they would after Ayda convinced Pin-Lee to get some actual sleep.

Even though she knew it was supposed to be there, Ayda was relieved when she saw the big hopper on the landing pad. As they banked for the landing, she could see the others waiting outside. Two of them were waving frantically. Ayda had a feeling that those two were Ratthi and Arada.

Pin-Lee set the hopper down and deployed the ramp. Ratthi and Volescu were at the ready with a gurney. They brought it into the hopper first, and Ayda and Pin-Lee watched them help Gurathin lift SecUnit onto it from the cockpit. After they wheeled it back out, Pin-Lee unbuckled herself and then helped Ayda get out of the seat restraints too. (It was considerably more of a challenge one handed.)

They came down the ramp and Arada tackled Pin-Lee in a hug. “Never do that again!” she said.

Pin-Lee replied, “I wasn’t the one caught in an explosion.” She gave Ayda a wry look.

Arada said, “Well, I can’t tell Dr. Mensah what to do!”

Overse said, “Come on, let’s get inside.”

Ayda agreed, “There’s not much else we can do now, but it’s probably not a great idea to stay out in the open like this.”

The four of them walked inside and to Medical together. When they got there, they saw that the others were all huddled around SecUnit’s gurney, having an argument.

Gurathin said, “There’s no point trying to get it in its cubicle. The resupply and repair ports are along the spine, in the area that was burnt the most. I don’t think it’ll be able to regenerate until a SecUnit tech can repair those. It’ll be a manual job."

“How are its supply levels, though?” Bharadwaj asked. “It might be able to restore partial functionality using what it has on hand.”

“I can’t tell yet,” Volescu replied. “It’s not projecting a signal, and the data port is trashed.”

Ayda and Pin-Lee drifted closer, looking over the others’ shoulders. In the stark light, SecUnit looked worse. They had turned it to lie on its stomach because the worst damage was on its back, which had taken the brunt of the explosion.

They’d removed some of the back panels already, and Ayda could see varying degrees of burns on the flesh that was exposed. The burns on its shoulder were the worst that she could see. The fire had destroyed the flesh there, exposing inorganic components that had warped from heat. With her helmet removed, the smell was unbelievable up close.

“I don’t want to risk hurting it,” Ayda said. They all turned to look at her. She shrugged. “It’s still semi-conscious. We don’t have the equipment to repair it here, and for all we know we could hurt it worse. The company will be here in a day. We need to focus on staying alive until then. They can help it more than we can right now.”

Ratthi sighed, and said, “You’re right. SecUnit saved our lives, we don’t want to repay it by hurting it.”

Volescu sighed. “With the systems down, we can’t maintain an automated perimeter. We should set up a guard outside.”

“Gurathin, Pin-Lee,” Ayda said, “I know Pin-Lee needs rest, but how long do you think it would take to get HubSystem restarted?”

“I don’t know,” Gurathin said, “Maybe an hour or two?” He glanced at Pin-Lee. “You can just get some rest. I don’t think I need your help.”

“No,” Pin-Lee said, “I’m not going to let you fuck it up.”

Ayda sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. It was probably a good sign that they still had the energy to bicker, but it didn’t make it any less annoying. “Then get on with it,” she said.

Pin-Lee and Gurathin left to go to the hub and try to get the systems back online. Volescu and Bharadwaj followed them out, having volunteered to take the first guard.

Arada sat in a chair next to SecUnit’s gurney, and peeled off the glove on its good hand. She locked her fingers with SecUnit’s, and asked, “What happened?”

Ayda was being prodded into a chair by Overse, who lain Ayda’s arm down palm up on an examination table. Overse bustled over to the supply cabinet to get the supplies for the splints. Ayda said, “I got grabbed by a rogue SecUnit that threw us off the cliff to escape a launch explosion.” They all looked dumbfounded. Ayda sighed. “I’m looking forward to going home, and enjoying a boring career in administration after this.”

Overse said skeptically, “I think there’s going to be a lot of bullshit before we can go back to our normal boring lives.”

Ayda would come to discover that Overse was right about that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to [FlipSpring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring) for beta reading! Zir help has been invaluable throughout this series.
> 
> I will probably do some more ASR alternate perspective/missing scenes in this series, but the next installment chronologically is going to be a bigger project. I'm very excited to get to work on it!
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


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